


Seducing Strangers and Other Friends

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drunk Dean, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Sloppy Makeouts, Smutlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 03:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3962950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He mostly exchanged bits with Jo, who tended to carry lighter chats. Jo was the only girl he knew that was as into music as he was. By the end of the night, she’d either convince him that REO Speedwagon was a good band or he’d drown her out with lyrics from Blue Oyster Cult and she’d be humming it under her breath to her chagrin long after her shift ended.</p><p>But he couldn’t pretend to care about Kevin Cronin’s hair crisis right now because Cas, his Cas, was conducting a social experiment on random strangers that could be serial killers or Canadians (never trust a Canadian) for all he knew. Usually, he wasn’t this uncomfortable with his for-sport promiscuity, but usually he knew the people he hit on. Easy targets for the most part; sometimes when he felt extremely crafty, he seduced women.</p><p>Or the one where Dean is hopelessly in love with his best friend, Cas, who has more interest wiggling his way into the lower hearts of men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seducing Strangers and Other Friends

"That's like a politician telling the truth—or McDonald's getting sued for an under-cooked burger. It just doesn't happen, ever."

"Is that a challenge, Winchester?"

Dean scoffed, trying to sublimate the thought of his best friend grabbing some guy's Sloppy Joe with the image of dead puppies, "You're not serious."

"As serious as you are trying to block out my signature move with dead puppies. I mean, really, what happened to granny's panties? Getting a little too big for your britches there, Yankee Doodle?”

The taller of the two gaped at Cas through slit, emerald eyes. Dean would die for the guy, considering their six years’ worth of a colorful past. What he wouldn’t do was sit around listening to a half-baked theory. “You can’t _turn_ someone gay, Cas.”

“It’s not about _turning_ anyone, Dean,” Cas emphasized, punctuating every syllable with the sharp flick of his tongue. ‘Twas a tongue of many tongues embedded within shallow fictions that he’s seen do amazing things… “It’s about simply bringing out what’s already there. Take you, for instance.”

Dean gulped. “W-what about me?”

No way was he going to let his gay best friend deduce random conclusions about him, regardless of the fact that Cas has seen his ass more than his own mother. Cas, he knew how to rope in the dudes, but not unlike Dean, he could never hold down a relationship. The closest form of a “relationship” he’s been in was with him, and he was okay with that. Sex wasn’t his style, neither was intimacy—Dean being his only exception, seeing he’s his only friend—but he be damned if Cas didn’t know how to work over a willing audience.

“Well you, Dean Winchester, are a riddle wrapped in an enigma. You’re a man’s man, you drive a muscle car, you eat meat with your hands; you’re so full of testosterone you just about pound on your chest every time you light a fire under someone’s backside. But, alas, you have one fatal flaw…” Oh shit, here it comes. He hopes Sammy isn’t around to hear this. “You listen to Taylor Swift.”

Or… um, wait: “Say what now?”

“You heard me,” Cas pressed, crossing his arms. He reviewed him with his loud marble-blue eyes. “Taylor Swift is your guilty pleasure. You like ‘Bad Blood’ but you prefer ‘Shake It Off’.”

Dean sat on his bed, gobsmacked. Well, the jig is up on that one. That’s when he decided that a) the internet knew too much, b) _Sam_ knew too much, and c) he couldn’t shimmy his way out of this friendship because _Cas_ knew as much as the NSA and will use this incriminating evidence against him someday. “So what’re you implying, a man can’t have his Wheaties and eat them too?” he said. He couldn’t believe he was defending a female pop icon. “Just because a dude likes to listen to hot chicks over Steven Tyler or Roger Waters doesn’t make him any less of a guy.”

“Very good, young Grasshopper,” Cas praised with a slick, white smile. God, he hated when he held the age card against him. In retrospect, two years is nothing to someone like Hugh Hefner. “You ruled out typecasts. But that’s not the lesson I’m trying to impart.”

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, more annoyed than anything. “Care to enlighten me, buddy?”

“I was hoping you’d ask!” he blurted, bouncing on his mattress like one of the five little monkeys. Cas tends to do that more often than a normal person should. Donna Hanscum from downstairs insists that Dean is some sex pundit and begs for the details (and tips). “Can you keep a secret?”

He tries doggedly to stay away from TMJ. “You know you can trust me, Cas.”

And then Cas leans in close enough that Dean’s restricted to the smell of his scalp and every piece of peppermint gum he’s ever chewed. He lingered his lips just below his ear and Dean thinks he’ll pass out before Cas gets to telling him said secret. No, usually they didn’t break the arms’ length rule; Cas is just great at being a dick. “Meet me… at the Roadhouse tomorrow night.”

“Alright, Darth Vader,” he coughed in a failed attempt to jostle the tension from his cramped room, “I’ll play your sick little game on one condition: You’re buying.”

Cas threw his head back until he was leaning against Dean’s headboard. He had a smirk on his face. “Typical Swift-loving alpha male, such diplomats.”

***

The Roadhouse wasn’t too terribly off the reservation in both locality and price range. It also helps that Dean’s personally known the owners, Ellen and her daughter Jo Harvelle, since he was still in the bed-wetting stage. They were good people, nice enough to put up with his shit for some twenty-odd years. The Winchesters weren’t always good people—especially when Ellen had something of a history with his dad before she met Bob (talk about your awkward family get-togethers)—but the Novaks were worse.

Okay, maybe just Cas.

The one thing he both admired and ostracized about the dude was that he was fast. He could work his way around a logarithmic function in the time that it took him to weave his way through a mingling crowd at the Roadhouse. If this was the 1950s, he’d be drafted into the mob faster than he could say dayenu.

Evidently, Dean was sitting to his lone on a stool that had to have been older than time itself. He took in the occasional female, but nothing that would get him a meal ticket—or a slap to the face, depending on how ballsy his pseudo-date was.

He started chatting with a girl, Lydia, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him what initiated the conversation. She was intelligent considering the impressive weight she carried on her chest, but he was disinterested. Her interests, from what little dialogue he could pick up on, relied in commerce, conservative politics, and global warming: none of which Dean remotely cared about. And, not to be a prude, was a little bit heavy for conversation starters, if he did have an opinion of his own.

After that _Fox_ short, he mostly exchanged bits with Jo, who tended to carry lighter chats. Jo was the only girl he knew that was as into music as he was. By the end of the night, she’d either convince him that REO Speedwagon was a good band or he’d drown her out with lyrics from Blue Oyster Cult and she’d be humming it under her breath to her chagrin long after her shift ended.

But he couldn’t pretend to care about Kevin Cronin’s hair crisis right now because Cas, _his_ Cas, was conducting a social experiment on random strangers that could be serial killers or Canadians (never trust a Canadian) for all he knew. Usually, he wasn’t this uncomfortable with his for-sport promiscuity, but usually he knew the people he hit on. Easy targets for the most part; sometimes when he felt extremely crafty, he seduced women.

He didn’t realize he had feelings for Cas until his second year at Vatterott, his transfer school. Cas had come into the garage one day and willed over the lower hearts of three students. Envy seethed inside his gut like the gasket that went kaput inside the POS car lent by their instructor. What made matters even worse was that Cas got so into his game that he ended up making out with Adam Milligan, the auto teacher’s son, who, word from the grapevine, was a gifted mechanic, good with his hands. (Seriously, how the hell does “Wow, you’re really _strong_ ” fly as a legitimate pickup line?)

Cas had other hobbies outside of philanthropy. In fact, when he wasn’t playing pretend, Cas was volunteering at local shelters and community food drives. Apparently, he was voted in high school as “Most Charitable” and “Most Likely to Succeed”. And he was so fucking smart. He could rattle off the first twenty digits of pi without opening his smudged palm or glancing at the loose wrapping around his water bottle. He was so good he had made his professors mad.

But, alas, pi didn’t win over the likes of men. Sex appeal, however…

Cas had these gorgeous blue eyes that you’d like to drown in after a long day, lips like two cracked pink plains bowed inward, artfully undomesticated dark hair that stuck up on all four points of the compass, and a body that would make any grown man weep. Castiel Novak was the one God broke the mold for. He was the reason for the sky and the stars and the sun and everything in-between.

“Skinny-dipping—to Marco Polo, really?” was what he earwigged. Castiel had an encouraging smile on his face, as if to say Please, enlighten me on this subject. He couldn’t see the dude he was talking to (kudos to the man in front of him bearing child), but he could’ve sworn he knew that voice…

The guy spoke, clear and precise: “Life on the sea gets awfully borin’. That was our pastime, the missus and I. I’ve been meaning to try it out. If you’re interested I can—” That’s all Dean heard before he put the voice to a name.

But it couldn’t be, he wasn’t—

“—into another guy stealing her thunder? Oh, Benny, I wouldn’t want to dull her memory.”

“Dull?” Benny Lafitte blasphemed, chasing liquor around the rim of his drink with his thumb. “No such thing. Not with them pretty blue eyes. You’d be enhancin’ her memory, chief.”

 _Chief_. Dean didn’t pay much attention in English 101, but he’s pretty sure that was Southern lingo for Take me now. He could see his best friend leaning heavily against his ex-best friend’s side, even though he probably only has one drink in him, if that. Cas was very good at raiding people’s wallets.

Then he returned to his side, pulling a single title from his pocket: _Sea You Later._

“See that?”

Dean shook his head, pushing the paper aside. “Don’t you mean see, s-e-a?” He held back a snort. “What exactly are you trying to prove, the dumbing-down of our nation?”

“He’s not illiterate,” Cas said, tossing him a wink, “but he does have a yacht.”

Dean let his mouth run fruitlessly as he mulled over that new information. When he cast a glance behind him he saw Benny (pork-belly long gone), his best friend before their fallout, still nursing his drink in the same oddly provocative way. Benny,who voyaged the high seas with a Greek heiress after high school. Benny,who referred to his closest pals as “brother”. Benny, who once single-handedly took out three guys with a knife and pure intuition, _that Benny,_ was… turned.

“I’ll be damned. How did you know?”

Cas ogled him like he’d lost his mind. “Sailors: biggest bi-curiouses out there.”

“And you know this how?” A pause, then: “Wait, don’t answer that.”

“You really are no fun, Dean Winchester.”

“I think I can live with that.”

One note turned into two, three, and even four (one a man by the name of Jeffrey Sams, whom Dean thinks is as vanilla as he is just plain gay, but Cas insists is stuck in the “experimental” stage), leaving Dean to bask in the glory of a Guinness under a cold spotlight. No one dared touch Dean after Lydia, not when they could be all over the boy next door.

Okay, so he proved whatever point he was trying to get across. Could he at least be the upstanding citizen he was underneath all that gloat and spare him those straight-out-of- _Cosmopolitan_ details?

Jo was bartering a curious look between the two of them. Dean presumed he forgot to pay his tab—he being him personally because he’s pretty sure Cas conveniently forgot his wallet or lost it in some guy’s pants—but then, upon further scrutiny, he saw the corners of her lips tugging into something that looked an awful lot like a smile. There’s a shabby backroom in the Roadhouse where he’s pretty sure Jo and the other bartender Ash bet on their friend’s waning virginity to a frequent blue-eyed customer.

“Off so soon?” she queried, dusting off a sixteen ounce for the sweaty man next to Dean.

“Sweetheart, I’m tryin' to make a livin', doin' the best I can. Now, when it's time for leavin'…”

Jo rolled her eyes, unfazed. “Yeah, yeah, I get it; you were born a rambling man.”

Dean made an imitation gun with his calloused hands, aimed it at the bartender, and even made a small _phew_ sound with his pursed lips. Okay, so maybe he was a little drunk. What else was he supposed to do while he was waiting for his best friend to snag another desperate loser?

“I take it I’m driving Miss Daisy tonight?” Cas was grinning wide. He slung his arm around his shoulder forward before Dean could _quid pro quo_ his way out of the compromise.

Jo shot Dean one last accusing expression before he toppled into the ink-splotched sky. The wind blew northbound, striking the back of Dean’s Henley, and caused a shiver to run down his spine. Cas must have noticed his intolerance because he was shrugging out of his jacket and wrapping it around his shoulders. Pleather didn’t do much to placate his current state; neither did the man staring at him through sapphire blue orbs.

Maybe it was the alcohol, or perhaps it was years of pent-up feelings; either way, Dean had Castiel pinned against the nearest back alley. He felt Cas slowly relax beneath his grasp. His mingling breath saturated his skin. He wasn’t afraid of Dean. Even if he was, they both knew struggling would serve to no avail. Dean was strong, years of tweaking carburetors and absentee fathers (including Castiel’s own at one point) would do that.

“How do you do it?”

Fleetingly, Cas’s tongue flicked out to lick sweat beads that found shelter inside the cracks of his lip. Castiel Novak never sweated. Until now. “I just… push the right buttons.”

“Buttons,” Dean mused over the mantra aloud like it was some ancient prophecy. “Like on your jacket, those’re buttons…” He paused, but not because he was hesitant. He seized Castiel’s sedentary wrist so that his fingers covered the first fasten on his hand-me-down fleece. “Show me.”

Cas’s hands traveled southbound until Dean’s chest, thinly clad by a gray undershirt, was exposed. His fingers spread out, mapping his torso. He was definitely skilled with his hands, but he was holding back. He didn’t have the same resolve as he did with his clientele. Suddenly, he forgot all of his famous moves. Dean helped jog his memory by strangling his Happy Meal, well overcooked inside his jeans. “Wow, Cas,” he gasped like a fish out of water, “you’re _really_ strong.”

Then Cas was nosing his way into Dean’s personal space, flipping their positions until Dean was the one pinned against the wall. Suffice to say, Dean had never seen him be this assertive with the guys he’s hit on, certainly not without a costly drink in his hand. And he certainly never wrapped his palm around the dude’s sweaty member _and_ interlaced his fingers in an unspoken promise. His mouth was ghosting along the seam of his bottom lip. His knee was pressing into their joint hands so hard that the action alone would’ve scarred Dean for life had Castiel been born a flat iron.

They were mere inches apart. It was now or never.

Dean instigated the kiss. It was rough and sticky and a little bit gummy hungry, but like hell if it wasn’t the kind of kiss he’d recreate over and over again (you know, for prosperity…). It was even better when his friend’s hand came up to cup his face, drawing him closer until they were practically one person. Cas’s grip on him tightened, as if he was afraid Dean would fly away. And he’d be right in his crazy supposition, for the most part. Dean’s about three feet away from sticking his freak flag on Motherland soil.

Somehow Dean’s hands ended up in Casanova’s dark tresses, once a perfectly arranged mess and now just a giant hot mess. Dean wasn’t OCD about many things, but that thick head of hair was undeniably among the list of exemptions. “Sorry, about, um—”

Cas cut him off with an evanescent kiss. “’S okay, it served its purpose.”

“Out of curiosity, what exactly was its—?”

“ _You_ , you idiot,” he rasped, slipping his hand underneath his shirt. “You were its purpose.”

Dean wore a shit-eating grin, obviously tickled by the answer. “And the ruthless flirting?”

“That depends, are we talking with you or Bi-curious Benny?”

“You know he can bench, like, 250 right?” Not like Dean’s ever stepped foot into a facility with hardcore workout equipment, but it sounded right. The dude was packing at least two hundred pounds of muscle. The rest was just skin. “He’d pound you senseless if he heard you call him that.”

With his teeth between his lip, Cas hummed in appreciation, “Hmm, sounds like a fun challenge.”

“I think you’ve had enough challenges, Rico Sauvé.”

“Alright, alright,” he conceded, “no more diabolical plans to get you into my pants.”

Dean waggled his finger at him. “Hey, I never said you couldn’t use me as your guinea pig.”

They were still excruciatingly close to the other, but since they had been practically inseparable before, nothing compared to the idea of being physically apart. Cas felt good, better than any Mary, Jill, or June he was used to hooking up with. He was going to sound like a typical guy when he said Cas was different from the others, but he was different in the best way. Cas was _family._ Cas was _home._

“Now that _definitely_ sounds like a challenge I can get behind.”


End file.
